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For this week only (23rd to 27th April) my collection of short stories entitled “A Sextet of Shorts” is free to download on your Kindle!
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Author: Chris Hall
Novelist, story writer, writer of just about anything for anyone!
Close the Window
From my Flash Fiction
Charles stared at the message on the screen. The web page you are viewing is trying to close the window. Do you want to close this window? He moved the cursor between the two options in the dialogue box: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Charles wasn’t sure. He had a number of windows open. There was one he didn’t want to close just now. He was in the middle of something.
The message repeated. Do you want to close this window? Charles rubbed the grey stubble on his chin. ‘Okay, okay,’ he muttered.
Janet peered over the partition at him. ‘You all right there, Charles?’ He looked back at the bright young woman who sat opposite him. ‘Er, think so.’
She nodded and continued tapping away on her keyboard. The younger generation, he thought, it’s all so easy for them. He turned his attention back to the screen and frowned. It seemed to have been busy all on its own and now there were a string of dialogue boxes all overlapping each other, all asking the same question. The question buzzed in his head: Do you want to close this window?
Another message popped up: The program you are using needs to shut down. He glared at the screen. The American spelling irritated him.
He moved the mouse slowly, checking each of the boxes. Which one? His fingers rubbed his temples. Charles felt the panic rising. He stared out of the window across the college lawns, breathing deeply.
Oh, to hell with it, he thought. He clicked.
Are you sure you want to…Click.
Are you sure you want to delete this student?…Click.
Warning! Please do not press this button. Charles lost it…Click.
A small plume of smoke rose up in a distant part of the campus.
Task completed successfully.
©2018 Chris Hall
Special Offer! Free Download!
My collection of short stories is now available.
‘A Sextet of Shorts’ will be free to download on Kindle
from Monday 23 – Friday 27 April.
Thank you to my husband Cliff Davies for the cover photograph.
Invasion of the Lizard People
2050: the land is too dry, or too wet. Little grows. We sit in our Ivory Tower, measuring, monitoring, allocating rations; creaming a little off the top for ourselves.
Khaki-clad figures under red parachutes drop from the sky. They advance on our building. Security yields.
Lizard tongues flick across our screens as they scrutinise our figures.
“Take me to your leader,” one says.
“Gladly,” I reply. (Will you eat him? I wonder.)
Two years later: crops thrive, no-one’s hungry. There’s a downside though. They nibble on live rats at their desks and will eat your pets when you’re not looking.
©2018 Chris Hall
From my first novel…
Here’s the Prologue from ‘The Silver Locket’…
The silver locket hides beneath the loose floorboard in a small attic room. Sunlight streams through the window pointing towards the tarnished trinket which waits patiently for its secrets to be unlocked.
The locket has a history. It has a past forged in passion and suffering; bought in the hope of love and put away in despair. A gardener’s boy, aspiring to the love of his master’s young daughter Cathy, bought it from a traveller at a local market. The traveller had assured him of the mystical powers of the locket which he said had been wrought in a far off land, where dreams come true.
The boy had spent a whole week’s wages on the locket; taken it home and polished it lovingly. He’d removed the faded photograph it contained and replaced it with a drawing of a little rabbit, ears pricked and nose raised as if sniffing a scent on the breeze. Cathy had been so delighted when he’d brought her the baby rabbit he’d found in the orchard that bright May morning. Together they’d taken it to the far side of the meadow and watch it scamper away, safe from the murderous eye of Mr. Stebbins, the head gardener.
A few weeks later, he gathered his courage and presented her with the locket. The traveller’s magic worked. She smiled up at him and kissed him quickly on the cheek. He took her lightly in his arms, the calloused skin of his hands stroking the soft fabric of her gown. He had captured her heart, just as he’d captured the little rabbit.
But as the sun rose high in the sky that summer, the locket, once so proudly displayed, disappeared from view. For a while longer it was still tenderly worn, pinned to the young girl’s under-bodice, close to her heart. But a year after its giving, the locket found itself gently put away, hidden in the under-floorboard darkness, waiting to be found.
Now read on…click here
My top 6 writing pet peeves
by Amy Karian
1. When I have three characters in a scene and one just kind of disappears into the sidelines
They might be smoking a cigarette or off drinking a Coke. Maybe they’re having a bathroom break. Maybe they’re lurking in the corner, reading ahead in the script to see what happens next or if their character is going to die. No one knows. That character is just missing in action and I can solemnly swear that I did not send them out of the room.
2. When my characters have out of character moments
They might say something that just doesn’t mesh with who they are and their normal way of talking/acting. My Internal Editor usually puts an end to that nonsense. I’ll have another character actually say, “What’s gotten into you? You’re not acting like yourself.” And I’m like “Heck yeah. He isn’t acting like himself. I’m…
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How to Write an Ending That Fits Your Story
by Andrea Lundgren
Personally, I like fitting endings even more than happy ones. Sure, it’s nice to know that the characters you’ve read about succeed. When you’ve invested time and emotional energy, you enjoy it when they make it out of their troubles and gain the victory they’ve sought for so long, but I don’t like false endings. I don’t like endings that feel fake, as though the author pulled some strings with the fictional higher powers to give the characters the ending they wanted, rather than what they deserved.
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A Sextet of Shorts
My collection of short stories is now available. Special offer!!
Free to download on Kindle from Monday 23 – Friday 27 April.
PS Thank you to my husband Cliff Davies for the cover photograph.
Back to Basics: 5 Things Editors Expect You to Fix BEFORE You Submit
Writing on your own, it’s easy — and acceptable — to leave small errors and ‘iffy’ sentences alone until you decide to edit later (if you ever get that far — let’s be honest). This doesn’t fly when you’re submitting your work to an editor, though. There’s a certain level of “polished” editors expect from anything they consider for publishing, and if you’re not willing, or don’t know how, to get to that stage, you’re going to have a hard time getting published.
This goes far beyond basic spelling and grammar. (If you can’t fix these obvious errors on your own, you’re probably not quite ready to submit to editors — and that’s OK.) Here’s what to make sure you’ve revised/rewritten before you send off that piece of writing.
1. Unnecessary words
Fluff is not at all an impressive thing. For many people, it’s a leftover bad habit…
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From the frying pan into the fire
by Theresa Jacobs
I was46 yrs. old, working in retail, and had squashed my desire to write for twenty plus years. I was beginning to question my life, or more so, my lack of ambition in 2016. One day I woke up and said to myself: “Life is pointless if I am not happy with who I am.”
My new life as a writer was born that day.
I did have a dusty, twenty-year-old manuscript, housed on floppy discs – for those who may not know, this is an outdated mode of saving files.
I have a tendency to jump straight from the frying pan into the fire. I took these files, and without re-reading the book, or doing any editing, I decided to upload it to Amazon. That was not a brilliant idea. I just put a rough draft out there for all the world to read.
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luna's on line 